Just recently, there has been a lot of talk of controversy when Obama won the Nobel Peace Prize for his promise of diplomacy and disarmament.  It is a delicate topic that many have mixed feelings about.  Behind the scenes of all the media coverage the award has attracted, there was another, less-controversial Nobel Peace Prize awarded, though.  In the category of Physics, the Prize was awarded to two winners that have made changes in many aspects of our everyday life.

Nobel Peace Prize in Physics for fiber optics expert

Charles K. Kao is a fiber optics expert who was awarded half of the 2009 Nobel Prize in Physics.  Kao has won numerous notable awards for his major contributions to the technology of fiber optics and the industry of telecommunications.  Basically, without the advancements that this man has pioneered, we probably wouldn't have the technology to take telecommunications and Internet technology to the levels of speed and fidelity that we have today.  Kao is largely reputed for his discovery that impurities in fiber optics cause high loss.  With this discovery, the industry focused on making more pure forms of fiber optics that would be able to carry data over long distances with minimal loss - a basic tenet of the Internet.

Nobel Peace Prize in Physics for CCD creators

The other half of the 2009 Nobel Prize in Physics was awarded to the two inventors of the charge-coupled device.  Normally referred to as the CCD, charge-coupled devices are used extensively in devices that are used for image-capturing.  Willard Boyle and George E. Smith each got one-fourth of the 2009 Nobel Prize in Physics for creating the CCD, which makes use of a sensor for capturing light and transposing it into a digital signal.  The charged-couple devise is used in your digital camera by taking the light in the lens, capturing it, and processing it into a digital signal to be displayed as image data.  Although CCD technology is used extensively in digital cameras, it is in medicine and science that the CCD has truly led to the biggest breakthroughs.  Here are some of the most popular applications of the charge-coupled device:
-  The Hubble Telescope is a popular example of how the CCD has been applied in the field of astronomy and astrophotography.
-  Color cameras make use of the CCD by applying a filter over CCD panels, which will result in accurate color and luminance resolutions for color photography.

So, despite all of the hoopla about certain 2009 Nobel Peace Prize winners, there are some winners who have certainly proved themselves.  Certainly, the advancements made by Kao, Boyle, and Smith are worthy of a Nobel Peace Prize and we should be greatly thankful for these men and their work.